Blurred Lines Side Stories
by ijnt
Summary: A collection of stories that won't always be canon, but will take place in the Blurred Lines universe. Contains side stories, omakes, and possible future 'what ifs.'
original fiction is hard and I'm goofing off and I was super duper inspired to write this. The original idea came from a discussion with AlmostElectric and her fine-ass self like forever ago.

anyway.

heeere have a thing that's probably non-canon omake for _Blurred Lines_. (I suppose it's possible that this ends up liek this but this Itachi would have failed pretty miserably for events to have happened in this fashion, which is why she's super emo.)

also if you're not familiar with the story, (or you haven't read it since june, which is when it last updated), here's a bit of a summary — it's a self-insert with me as itachi, is the basics. There's quite a bit of character development between Itachi and the other Uchiha, including Shisui. I'm also a trans woman in real life, so the SI is the same way, so there are strong parallels with being the wrong gender and trying to prevent the massacre.

* * *

Note: This a possible future — _Blurred Lines_ is not going to play out like this.

Itachi had always liked this dango shop. It was, in her extremely expert opinion (being the authority in all things candy-related), the best place for dango in Konoha. The day was sort of nasty and muggy, but sitting there, sipping warm tea was a nice, relaxing break from everything. The red bean dango here was nothing if not top notch, and the tea was comparable.

In the lingering humidity of last night's rain, the heavy cloak and hat were stifling. Itachi almost preferred it that way, because she was better off staying alert and uncomfortable. As she sat, she gazed out at Konoha, memorizing every detail. It bore the recent scars of Orochimaru's attack, but other than that, it was the same place she'd lived for the first thirteen years of her life. It was strange to be here again, as if nothing had happened. That afternoon when she and Shisui had seen Anko for the first time after she'd demonstrated the Grand Fireball for the first time in front of the clan seemed like some half-imagined dream, and a lifetime's worth of regrets separated them.

She wasn't here with Shisui, her best friend. She was here with Kisame, who was a partner, a companion, and maybe a very casual friend, the kind of friend that you knew more by circumstance than by any genuine fond feelings and never had any serious conversations with. They only ever talked the mission or the weather or their jutsu, and never about feelings or regrets or long-lost memories.

He'd suggested that dango place, and she'd only been too happy to agree. But it wasn't a teammate suggesting something out of nostalgia, it was purely born of the fact that Kisame wanted a snack and knew Itachi would agree if it was a dango place. It was the comfort of knowing another's preferences and quirks, but not their inner self.

Not that anyone could claim to know Itachi's inner self these days.

The life of a missing-nin did that to you. The Akatsuki was probably one of the better things she could have done after leaving Konoha, in all honesty. That kind of legitimacy, even if it wasn't the support of a Hidden Village, still carried a lot of weight. They had an impeccable reputation as mercenaries that never failed to complete their missions, and it opened a lot of doors for them. There were a lot of resources in the group too — safehouses and food and shinobi equipment — things that were all hard to come by as a missing-nin, who were essentially homeless and had very few guarantees of regular work or pay.

Without Akatsuki, she wasn't entirely sure she would have managed.

Of course, she wasn't entirely sure if that would be all that bad of a thing. But it was, and that's what was enough.

A voice echoed from the front of the shop, breaking through her thoughts. "I'm waiting for Sasuke."

She froze, not listening to anything after that name. The pang of chakra, the rustle of a page as someone thumbed a well-worn volume. _Kakashi_. Kisame eyed her as she sat there, frozen in mid-bite. She calmly chewed and swallowed the treat, and turned to him.

"We should move," she said. She could see Sasuke's legs — too thin, was he eating properly? — clad in those white shorts, the hem of a blue clan shirt above it. She'd had one just like it.

"What is it?" Kisame asked impatiently.

"Copy-Nin, your seven o'clock." Her brother and one of her only reasons for living, too, but he didn't need to know that.

"Isn't that what we came for?"

Itachi furiously set down her dango. "We are leaving _now_. You are not starting a fight in the middle of the market. Hatake goddamn Kakashi is _right there._ Not only is he a skilled tracker, he _knows my scent_. Our mission will be a failure before it even starts if we don't move _right now._ "

Kisame glared sullenly, grudgingly setting down his unfinished stick. "Fine."

At that admission, they vanished from the tea shop.

(Kakashi sniffed twice, and glanced over at the half-eaten skewers and still-steaming tea, frowning. Sasuke grimaced next to him, mood soured, even if he wasn't aware why.)

Itachi and Kisame slowed down near a canal. Itachi frowned. This place seemed familiar, somehow. Kisame grumbled something about perfectly good dango to her left, but she ignored him, like usual. For a dangerous criminal, he was very childish sometimes, and it was best to ignore such behaviors. If she didn't give him any attention, he would stop eventually.

They set off in a different direction, distancing themselves from the near-discovery, while Kisame complained and Itachi pretended she couldn't hear it.

Until someone stepped across their path. Itachi greeted the newcomers. "It's been a long time. Asuma, Kurenai."

The two jounin started. Asuma grasped the implication first.

"You know who we are. You're a leaf-nin," he said. "Why are you here?"

Itachi didn't anwser, and instead tipped her hat forward and let her eyes do the talking, sharingan full bore.

Asuma started, and stepped back, but he didn't break eye contact. It was very considerate of him, really, to make it so easy for her. Most people knew not to, nowadays. Of course, that might have been because he was already under a genjutsu, but that was life, wasn't it? Itachi took a second to savor the moment, because goddamn was it nice to have someone who was both foolish enough to meet her eyes and properly appreciative of just how fucked they were now that they had. It was something that she honestly did not get to experience enough — it ruined it for her if she had to stop and explain her moves mid-battle.

As if in a daze — she hadn't even done anything to him yet, honest — he muttered, "Well, that answers that question, Uchiha Itachi. I see the rumors are true, then." He punctuated the last comment by eyeing her up and down. Of course, she looked nothing like Itachi was supposed to look. No one with working eyes would mistake her for a man. What she'd done to herself was nothing if not effective, even if she'd paid dearly for it.

She shrugged off her hat and ran a hand through her hair. It was too muggy, and the hat was doing it no favors. Asuma was looking at her like he'd never seen her before — and, upon further thought, he'd never seen her like this, because he'd been away for ten years with the Twelve Guardian Ninja. Ten years ago, she'd been a genin. A genius prodigy genin, but still an eight-year-old.

Not to be forgotten — she knew he _hated_ it when enemies paid all their attention to her and not to him — Kisame rumbled, "I see you already know Itachi, here. I am Hoshigaki Kisame, of the Hidden Mist. Now we all know each other." He grinned, and Itachi knew he was eagerly anticipating a fight. She'd have to let him fight Asuma, too, or else he'd pout for at least a week that she'd made him fight the genjutsu mistress.

"I suppose I'm lucky that I met you guys here." Asuma said, as he shook out his arms, limbering up for the fight that everyone knew was coming.

"We, Asuma," Kurenai reminded him. She nodded at Kisame. "I've heard of you. The Hidden Mist wants your head very badly, Hoshigaki Kisame. Something about killing a daimyo and his entire family?"

"Something like that," Kisame said mildly.

"You're both S-ranked missing-nin," Asuma said. He'd still not broken eye contact with Itachi, and she could see him straining against her illusion. She let him break it, only to be caught by the genjutsu underneath it that tricked him into thinking that Kisame and Itachi had switched places. Asuma continued, now speaking directly to Kisame's left pectoral, "You've got a lot of nerve coming back here, Itachi."

"Considering this is your home village, people here don't like you much," Kisame commented dryly. Itachi snorted.

"Are you going to fight us, or not?" Itachi asked. "It's a foolish idea, of course, and I must warn you it won't end well."

"So that's how it is, Itachi? You're awfully cocky. I must warn _you_ not to underestimate us," Asuma retorted. "What's the goal here, anyway? I don't care how badass you guys are, you can't take the whole village. So what's the endgame?"

"Enough!" Kisame said. He planted Samehada into the ground between them, causing tremors to rumble around the edge of the canal and disrupting Itachi's illusion. The communication was unspoken — he didn't need fancy tricks to provoke Asuma into fighting him. "You Leaf-nin talk too much. In the Mist, we communicate with violence. And I'd very much like to have a private chat with you," he pointed to towards Kurenai, "if you catch my drift."

Itachi chuckled again, and Asuma bristled. Of course, Kisame wanted Asuma to spring to Kurenai's defense. However violent and thuggish Kisame might have been, the man was far from stupid.

"Just don't go overboard," she said. "You have a tendency to get carried away, and we still need to infiltrate the village."

Kisame sounded like he was going to protest, but she cut him off. "And you think Konoha won't notice it if you hit them with a tidal wave?"

He grumbled, but didn't rebut that point. Instead, he struck, swinging Samehada down in an enormous arc towards Kurenai. True to form, Asuma was there, parrying the blow with his trench knives.

Itachi glanced over at Kurenai, and the woman's form wavered and disappeared. Itachi smirked. Impressive. A fight with an actual genjutsu user and Fire Country dango? Today was a good day.

She decided to make a shadow clone for backup, and just sit back and let Kurenai make her move. Itachi was curious to see what she would come up with. Maybe they both would get lucky and Kurenai would get the drop on her and end it here and now, and do the world a favor. Beside her, Kisame and Asuma danced, trench knives like a fluttering melody frolicking around the bass undertones of the half-bandaged Samehada.

Kisame darted around and scored Asuma across the shoulder. The big man with the giant sword was always quicker than they expected. Itachi had to physically resist putting him under a mild inner-ear genjutsu. If it was over too fast, Kisame would get whiny.

"Kurenai, you're late!" Asuma said, and then Itachi's vision was clouded with illusions. She was genuinely impressed. A single strong illusion wouldn't fool the sharingan for long, and Kurenai would know this, if she'd had more than a five-minute conversation with Shisui about genjutsu. So, instead, she had hidden her real weapon — her strongest illusion — under a flurry of smaller illusions, each of which were visually complicated. It was a blitz attack, designed perfectly to defeat someone who was over-reliant on the sharingan. If Itachi panicked and fell back on her eyes, this would end her. Shisui would probably have fallen for it at least once, so Kurenai had undoubtedly developed the move from sparring with him.

Of course, Itachi had not defeated an entire clan of sharingan users by relying too much on her eyes. She halted the chakra to her eyes while simultaneously utilizing both conventional methods for dispelling: a burst of chakra from one hand, and a cut across her forearm from the other.

The Kyuubi stopped roaring, the rain of sakura petals stopped falling, and Manda stopped circling. Almost everything else wavered, except the thick fogbank and the tree currently constricting her limbs. A visual illusion versus a physical one? It was obvious which was stronger. Itachi turned her sharingan on the tree. It had no obvious physical imperfections, which would make sense if it wasn't a tree at all, and it had a space for Kurenai to strike from —

— Itachi pulsed chakra to her eyes, concentrating —

— and then she blinked, and Kurenai was wrapped up in a tree and Itachi was standing in front of her, unhindered and untouched.

Itachi smiled.

"That was well-done," she praised. Kurenai stabbed herself in the arm, and then they both moved. The taijutsu bout lasted less than a furious second, ending with Kurenai flying out across the water, landing near the opposite edge of the canal. Itachi's shadow clone was waiting, and it moved to incapacitate Kurenai.

"Not paying attention will be your death!" Kisame said, as Itachi became aware of her partner and his opponent again. Samehada droned a long, aggressive note, and in response, Asuma pressed a furious staccato melody with his trench knives.

Kisame dodged out of the way, and tossed his sword form one hand to the other, and his hands were so fast in the intervening time that Itachi could barely make out the hand signs, even with the sharingan.

And then the tidal wave rose.

Asuma's eyes widened in a moment of panic even as another, rival wave appeared out of nowhere. The waves crashed together, and Itachi saw Hatake Kakashi touch down in front of her shadow clone through the clone's eyes.

"It's you I saw earlier in the tea shop, isn't it?" Kakashi asked.

Itachi's clone nodded to him, to acknowledge the point.

"It's been a long time, Itachi."

"So it has, captain."

(Across the canal, Kisame leaned down next to Itachi's not-clone self, and whispered, "I suppose you want this one, then?"

"If it's no trouble, yes. We have...history.")

Kakashi said, "Whatever it is you're looking for, Itachi, you won't find it. You either, Hoshigaki Kisame."

Kisame laughed. "I've already had plenty of fun. You're too late to stop that, Hatake."

And then Itachi stiffened, and almost absentmindedly released her shadow clone. Kakashi started, and looked over at the two of them.

"I suddenly find myself otherwise occupied," she said, and gestured to the group of leaf ninja. "They're all yours, Kisame. Don't underestimate Hatake. And don't forget why we're here."

"Yes, _mother_ ," Kisame said sullenly.

Itachi offered no retort, because she was staring at Shisui, perched a few feet away on the edge of the canal. He looked...surprisingly good. Gone were the remnants of the boyish fat on his face, and he stood tall and lithe, with long, capable limbs and a languid, casual grace to his movements. The long slash that covered his left eye had faded into a thin silver line, instead of the angry, bandaged gash that she remembered. His eyes glinted red with the sharingan, but he smiled at her, open and welcoming.

"Hey there, Itachi," he said. "Long time no see."

Itachi sort of hated him for that, then, because he had no business smiling at her and being charming, as if nothing had happened between them. As if she hadn't stabbed him and left him for dead the last time they met.

"Shisui," she said.

"You're looking good, Itachi." Because that was totally a lie. She didn't look good. Her hair was half decent, sure, but she hadn't been eating that well, the lines in her face were more pronounced than ever, and she didn't brush her teeth nearly as often as she should.

A small frown formed on her face, and she said, "And you look disgustingly pleased with yourself, Shisui. Shall we get this over with?"

"What?" He looked genuinely confused for a half-second, and Itachi felt a perverse pleasure at that.

"I'm a missing-nin. Kinslayer. The murderer of our entire family. Don't you even want to know why?" Itachi asked.

Shisui's eyes widened. But then his grin curled, so it became crooked a crooked half-smirk. He shrugged and held his hands out in a 'what can you do?' gesture.

"No, I think I've got it figured out. I forgave you for that years ago, Itachi."

And somehow that made Itachi angrier than she'd been in a long time. Sasuke hated her. Sasuke had dedicated his life to hating her, to ending her. It was what she had wanted, what she had chosen. And Shisui had the audacity to greet her like nothing had changed.

"Why the hell would you do that?" she asked, glancing over at where Asuma and Kakashi were double-teaming a cackling Kisame, tidal waves swirling around the melee.

"You did what you had to — it's the people who forced you into that position that I hate. You did everything you could to prevent that."

A perverse, inane thought entered her head, and she launched herself at Shisui. He was fast, almost as fast as her, and he darted out of the way, before flickering over to her side and launching a flush of punches, so quick they fluttered out like sparks from a firework. Itachi, however, was that little bit faster, and she plucked the strikes from the air one by one. Shisui struck again, and Itachi's quick oblique kick stopped his leg before he could get any momentum.

Their eyes met, twin sharingan blazing, tomoe swirling, and their physical struggle halted, replaced by one of chakra and will. Itachi and Shisui had grown up together, had trained together since they were small. One of their first competitions was a battle of genjutsu: a test where one would use illusions and trickery to confuse and disorient the other. They were friends, close in a way few people could be. To say that they knew each other's quirks was not mere understatement — it was built on the fundamentally incorrect assumption that there were things about the ninja arts that they hadn't discovered together.

So, when their eyes met, it was not through genjutsu that they fought. It was something more base, more primal, more intimate. It was a test of pure will — Itachi's enraged malice and contempt against Shisui's forgiveness and affection. There were no justsu exchanged — it was two people exerting their will in different directions.

After what had felt like an eternity, but could really be anywhere from a few seconds to a few hours, Itachi could feel her anger slowly eroding in the force of Shisui's emotions, and she struggled to hold onto herself. She broke first, looking down and away and darting backwards a bit, out of taijutsu range. Her eyes burned, either from channeling too much chakra or from the force of emotions, she wasn't sure which.

"I don't want to fight you, Itachi. You're the best friend I've ever had," he said, earnestness oozing from every pore.

"Well, that's too bad, isn't it?" Itachi said, her hatred returning in full force. She tensed, and launched a curtain of shuriken. Shisui flicked out of the way, right into the path of the follow-up fireball. But instead of dodging or countering, Shisui made a strange, aborted twitching motion and suddenly he was standing on the other side of the fireball, kicking out at Itachi. Only her speed saved her from the blow, and she danced backwards, mouth set in a furious line.

"Itachi. Fighting like this isn't going to solve anything."

"No? Shisui, we're enemies now. We _must_ fight. I am Uchiha Itachi, kinslayer, member of Akatsuki. Missing-nin, and famous traitor to our homeland. What loyal ninja of the Leaf would consort with such a person?" Itachi spat, and her feelings must have been showing openly on her face, because Shisui stared at her in disbelief.

Then his face took on that frustrated, determined look he got whenever he struggled to explain something. "You're my friend, Itachi! That will never change, no matter who or what you become. If you have to kill the entire Leaf village, I'll be there for you. You don't need to do this alone, like you did five years ago."

"And now you're my enemy. I _must_ do this, like you _must_ hate me. It's better this way. The time for childish games is over, Shisui!" Itachi punctuated this statement with another grand fireball. Shisui countered with his own. The flames burnt hot, hotter than either one would individually, creating a maelstrom of flames that curled upwards into the sky.

Itachi risked a glance over at Kisame. He was shirtless now, breathing hard, Samehada fully uncovered. Asuma was bleeding heavily, and Kakashi looked slightly unsteady on his feet. Then, a green blur flashed into view, crashing into Kisame and knocking him nearly twenty meters.

"It is I, Might Guy! Konoha's Sublime Green Beast! I will join in your noble fight, Kakashi!" the man shouted. Itachi wondered if Kisame was annoyed at her yet. She was probably going to have to hear about his endless re-tellings of the time she'd made him fight a ton of Konoha jonin while she had a pleasant chat with one of her old friends. Still, he wasn't dead yet, so that was something.

The fire petered out, and Shisui stood there, panting. "I refuse to give up on you so easily, Itachi. We've fought so many times before, one measly duel isn't going to change how I feel."

"You were always so idealistic, Shisui."

Itachi stared at him. Her eyes blurred, ached, and itched all at once, and once the discomfort cleared, she knew she would be sporting a strange, petal-like shape in her sharingan. A six-pointed flower, three spokes that ended in gentle arcs and three spokes that ended in sharp points.

Shisui blinked at her, and barely body-flickered away in time to avoid the black flames of Amaterasu that surged from Itachi's eye. Itachi realized that if she used the Mangekyo too much, she would exhaust herself, and if Kisame hadn't won before Guy showed up, he wasn't going to. If she couldn't beat Shisui in the next minute or so, they would have to flee. Kurenai had disappeared a few minutes ago, and the ANBU couldn't be far off.

It was now, or never. Shisui, however, seemed to realize this too, because the moment she caught his eye, she realized far too late that she wasn't the only one that had resorted to Tsukuyomi.

Her six-pointed petal eyes met Shisui's seven-pointed shuriken, and the world _shifted_.

Instead of the illusory world of the Tsukuyomi, they were standing in a familiar place — their old training ground, the most isolated of the Uchiha clan spaces. The colors of the Tsukuyomi remained, but Itachi found she had no power to change this world. Standing across from her was Shisui, looking equally as puzzled.

"You used Tsukuyomi, too, then?" he asked.

"Yes," she admitted. "There was no more time — Kisame and I have to go, if we are to escape the hunter-nin."

"I suppose I can't blame you for that," Shisui said, and Itachi could feel the first hint of genuine annoyance in his tone. "You have to look after _him_."

"I chose this, you know," she said. "I'm sorry that I can't be that person you want me to be."

"Oh, Itachi. When will you realize you already are?"

"But—"

He held a hand, to stall her protests. "You're an idiot sometimes, you know that? You're the smartest person I know, and sometimes you're so unbelievably dense. You do know that I know exactly what you did and why you did it, right? You did it for us — for me and for Sasuke. The clan was never going to see reason, and never going to back down. I realized you'd left me your eyes the second I read the tablet in the Naka shrine. You're so determined to be the villain so we don't have to that you can't see past your own self-pity. But you gave us the tools to succeed. You gave Sasuke a reason to grow strong. And you gave me what I needed — a way to maintain my most lethal weapon and a sign, however small, that you still cared. That was enough."

Itachi bristled at that, genuinely annoyed at the self-pity comment. "Don't you see? Someone had to bear the weight of our clan's sins, and you both deserve so much better than that legacy. Better for me to carry it all, than to condemn you both with me."

And then Shisui laughed. Not a chuckle, or a giggle, a full-blown belly laugh.

"No, Itachi. You've never had to do this alone. Not since we were kids. I was always there for you. I've always accepted you. When you came to me and told me you were really a girl, I already knew, remember? I've always seen you, much better than you've seen yourself. I knew from the moment we met who you really were. Honestly, you _hurt_ me that day." He gestured to his scar. "Not just here, either. I thought, 'she's trusted me with everything — we've shared _everything_ with each other. What did I do that made her feel like she couldn't come to me with this?'"

"I never wanted to hurt you, Shisui. But you _and_ Sasuke — you both deserve so much better than me. I'm a failure. The only thing I ever set out to accomplish that really mattered, I've failed. I killed them, Shisui. I'll never forgive myself for that. Not because it wasn't necessary — it was — but because it means that I couldn't save them. All this power, all this knowledge. It was useless. _I_ was useless."

And then Shisui was in front her, far too close for comfort. Itachi was one of the quickest shinobi she'd ever encountered, but in that time and space, Shisui was far too quick for her to react. A hand snaked around her waist, and she tensed, and then she was pressed to a flat chest in a tight hug.

"You silly girl, how many times do I have to explain it to you? I'd help you burn the world if it meant I could be with you."

Itachi's heart stopped.

All of a sudden, she became very aware that physical sensations were very much a thing in this not-Tsukuyomi. And in the five years they'd grown apart, Shisui had grown taller, and Itachi had grown curvier. The body that the forbidden jutsu had given her was far more developed and voluptuous than she'd expected, and while she was tall for a woman, Shisui was one lanky motherfucker. She felt very...feminine, in that moment, in his arms.

Nervously, she looked up and met his eyes. Her eyes. The seven-pointed stars of their clan's famous eyes peered back at her, and then she could feel him — everything he felt for her. The strange conflict from their earlier fight was there, that strange, chakra-laden eye-to-eye struggle. But this time, they weren't struggling.

They were feeling.

Everything she felt — the happiness at seeing him, the fear she had for both him and for Sasuke that she hid behind anger — warred with his feelings, the genuine relief and delight he'd felt at seeing her that was laced so strongly with affection that she felt honestly inadequate again, to the frustration he'd felt when she lashed out, to the exasperation at her stubbornness.

In that moment, she saw herself the way he saw her, and she realized for the first time in two lives that she was truly beautiful. It wasn't in the way she looked, but in the way she had seen so much ugliness in the world and vowed to be better. The way that she set herself against fate and destiny and the very world telling her something, and she still imposed her will on it, demanded that reality bow before her and not the other way around. For the beauty that other women were given, and she had to fight tooth and nail for. Shisui loved her because truly saw her, despite how she held the world at arm's length.

Itachi realized then, too, that while she might not feel the same way about him that he felt about her, she did love him. She had for a while — she wasn't the kind of person that could grow close to someone without loving them, and those romantic feelings had been buried under a tidal wave of stress about the coup and body image issues and her deep-seated feeling of inadequacy, both because of her gender issues and the fact that she felt she was a poor substitute for the canon Itachi.

But there was room there, for her love for him to grow into something like what he had for her, and that was enough.

Shisui drew back and smiled tremulously. "Do you see now?"

Itachi just nodded, a bit dumbly.

"So, we good?"

She smiled, something that she had done rather too little of in her life. "Shut up and kiss me, Uchiha Shisui."

And then he did.

Of course, he had to go and fucking ruin it a few seconds in by laughing, and she drew back and asked, "What?"

He dove in for the exposed neckline of her Akatsuki cloak. "I just realized — we're in a Tsukuyomi. We're trapped in here for three days together. I'm so excited, I've always wanted to try this with a girl. Have I told you how badass you look in this cloak, by the way?"

Itachi just rolled her eyes.


End file.
